poetry

“how many miles left to babylon?”
i ask as i dig my toes further into the sand
you give me that smile:
“just there, on the horizon”

under a full moon
i saw you
and you were my medicine
because i was my poison

heartaches are healed by the sea
i drift and i flow
i ebb and slip below
“how many miles to babylon?”

heartaches are healed by the sea
and i can’t tell if it’s killing me
or making me stronger
but this i know:

i am my poison
but i am also my cure

…

untitledi became daisy and
you might think that makes me crazy
but

some days my lips feel
so plump and luscious still
other days they are paper
thin spread across my face

some days my limbs are thin
graceful and long but then
other days they’re squat and fat
like school boys still in short pants

i’m starting to feel like
i’m made of a different matter
than human

i feel calm
in the turmoil that surrounds

i’ve a freckled face
and a salt water soul
as shallow as i am deep

it’s my voice
and these are my words
i am a glamorous
blur

…

stop killing each otheri listened
i stayed soft and loving
trusting
when they said
the world would
make me hard

but now all i feel
is raw
and hurt

it’s painful to be a tender thing
in a world hard as diamonds

…

i don’t know. i’m just really sad gene wilder’s dead.this smoothie tastes exactly like every single
pineapple spiked alcohol punch i made
and gleefully swallowed over countless weekends
weekdays
all throughout school

now that it’s melted it tastes exactly like
the lemonade slushes we’d clamor
to find cash for
before promptly getting
sand in cups too big for our little hands

the smoothie’s gone and i reach for a mountain dew
that doesn’t taste like anything except
mountain dew
my last resort soda
a taste i could associate with my worst late nights
if i so chose

funny how little things and tastes change
funny how they’re never exactly the same

…

song of myselfno one else ever sang me love songs
so i began to hum them with myself in mind

no one else was ever inspired by my face,
no one felt the need to pen it to page
or capture it in a photo

so i made myself my own muse
and filled film and canvas
with my face, body, heart,
with my very essense

and when i finally learned to love myself,
you all began to hate me.

…

in the hurricane’s eyecigarettes taste better in the chill of autumn and
it hurts to realize how little i’m
able to do
for you
for me

and it hurts to realize
how hard it is to write anymore
my words elude me
stopping just short of the tip of my pen
all of this was once so easy
when all of me belonged wholly to the page
i believed in the fairy tale
but not the reality

i tiptoed through the necessary intricacies of this world
not realizing i never left a trace
no memory of who i once was for me or anyone else to recover:

a wind blowing through this world
with nothing and
no one to cling to
no sustainable past to bring to a
future of stability

and i learned:
he who sows the wind shall reap the storm

…

ladies is pimps too(for international women’s day 2015)our fists close over barley and cloves
our siren song not close to over

we are the granddaughters of the witches
who you could not burn
and our voices ring through the winds
carried out on the wings of ravens

no longer content to hide in caves
our coven emerges

and we will be brave
and strong
feared
and adored

worshipped
like the kitty cats between our legs

…

fergusoni cannot feel the full force of your anger:
my patience has not worn so thin
from everyday battles of overt injustices

the extent of my sorrow and pain
can never know the depths of yours

i’ve grown up in the luxury
of a white safety net

and i’m not sure what i can do-
my words won’t change the world
but yours will

feed your headbeing an adult means having a beer at 11:22 am
to get the stale taste of sauvignon blanc out of my mouth

summer is made of suspended time
drifting
all beginnings and ends
tangled

wet hot heat is the only thing i claim as my own
it stays
it boils the blood
it strings together the distant different nights
throughout the endless days

…

fuck iti can fake it with the best of them
talk shit with the best of them
take a hit from the best of them

i can make a break from the rest of them

it’s 3 in the afternoon and all i’ve consumed today
is tap water and cum
and sometimes i think i want to talk
but i’m usually wrong

so give me a hundred grand
gestures

and convince me to stay

…

how to tame a wild blueberry muffini don’t know what you mean to me
maybe if i did i
could begin to fathom my
feelings for you

but just as the taming of a
stubborn stallion or this wild
blueberry muffin
takes dedication and time
-so much time-

so too would it take to describe
the feeling i get when

you run your fingertip down my spine

…

dum spiro spero: a reminderbreathe:
wonder if pandora’s box contains destruction or solution,
and would you open it to find out?

breathe:
words that spill out until they are no longer your own
as images scatter cross your brain, flashing behind your eyes.

breathe:
as you try to convince yourself you’re not an artist
because you were born after all the others.

breathe:
because feet have carried you to where you need to be
so you can stop, rest…rest and stop.

breathe:
while thanking the gods that you’re here
a microscopic speck that grew, grew and grew.

breathe:
and remember, no matter what happens to you or
the world around you: in your box remains hope.

…

i loved you in the valley (nee collaboration)written with carl moorea half blue hazel way to die-
for when the world ends, i’ll be lost in your eyes
your hurricane eyes save my soul, my life,
helping me ignore your lips and your lies.
those empty words stretch out a hand to me
and when it all falls apart, i’ll step back, let them be.
i hope one day before the day we’re dying,
you’ll go back and hate yourself for lying.

a mixed up, two faced way to die-
i loved you in the valley…now i know why.
in your heart i plowed the ground for sowing.
my seeds, through droughts and winters, kept growing.
broke my back, cut my hands just thinking,
what we could’ve been taints the dreams i’m dreaming.
blown away from each other,
i washed my sins, treating the loss of my lover.

just a deadbeat fool it seems i am-
realizing how hard it is to not give a damn.
the best thing now is for me to move on.
love lost has a way of keeping us alone,
no longer as strong, left only to roam.
i want to reconnect with you, my home.
but soon, my logical head my broken heart will aid.
as time goes faster, your presence in my mind will fade –

i wonder what places i have already visited for the last time
and i wonder who notices

you grab my hand, pulling me along
i was never fast enough,
more likely to drift away,
becoming aloft and immersed in the daily activity
of the people to whom i can’t relate

i have no idea where this will lead us,
but i have an indefinite feeling

i feel and i know
it will be a place both wonderful
and strange

…

paradiseno one has walked on the moon in my lifetime
still i find myself glancing upward
astonished by every phase
new to full

all the leaves are brown
and a chill fills the air
my belt cinches tighter into my flesh
and i peer forward, keeping eyes ahead

the sky seems barely attainable
yet a crescent moon feels like home
and walking this street tonight i feel
as though i’m in a pablo neruda poem

“i do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,”
i love you as though you were moonstones and super novas
you are in the essence of my being
and in the essence of my universe,
my apple pie from scratch and
my land of milk and honey